Qiao Jiajin and Zhang Shan made an agreement—if the two of them met again at “Chu River Han Border,” they would fight it out right there.

After all, the other rooms were too cramped, with the “doors” in the center getting in the way.

When that time came, both would wager their own “characters,” and whoever won would take them all.

After bidding farewell to Zhang Shan, Qiao Jiajin immediately turned around and headed toward another door.

From his memory, this path should have been explored by Zhang Chenze, but he didn’t know why she still hadn’t shown up.

From Qi Xia’s “preparation area” to “Chu River Han Border,” theoretically one only needed to pass through two rooms, yet not only had he finished walking through both rooms, he had even chatted with Zhang Shan for a while.

In all this time, not a single person had come out. Could they have run into danger? Or perhaps the rooms they were exploring didn’t just have “doors”?

Qiao Jiajin felt something was off. He reached out to open the door, preparing to set out from the opposite direction to meet up with Zhang Chenze.

But after he walked into the room, he discovered that this place wasn’t much different from the route he had explored—it also had just one door, except this door had the character “Chou” written on it.

“Lawyer Zhang, are you here?”

Qiao Jiajin called out, but no one answered him.

“How strange…”

There wasn’t a single person in the room. From the looks of it, Zhang Chenze hadn’t even made it through the first room.

They were both sent out to scout the terrain, yet Qiao Jiajin couldn’t understand why their speeds would differ so much.

An ominous premonition rose in his heart, and he could only head toward the first room.

The moment he pushed open the door, his brow furrowed. He and Zhang Chenze had entered two different rooms at the same time. He hadn’t seen her emerge from the other end, and now as he retraced her path, he still couldn’t see anyone.

“Disappeared…?”

Qiao Jiajin muttered to himself, countless questions surging through his mind.

He walked over to examine the wooden door standing in the center of the room. The character “Shen” was written on top.

“What the hell…” Qiao Jiajin touched the door and looked around for a long time before a bold idea surfaced.

Could it be that Zhang Chenze’s understanding of “investigating the rooms” was different from his…?

What she was investigating was…

Before Qiao Jiajin could react, the wooden door in front of him was gently pushed open, and a puzzled-looking Zhang Chenze walked out from within.

“Hey! Lawyer Zhang!” Qiao Jiajin quickly pulled her out of the door. “What the hell! You’re so bold! You went in by yourself?”

“Yes…” Lawyer Zhang patted her chest, still shaken. “I also agonized at the doorway for a long time, but I felt that only by going in to investigate would be the optimal solution. Otherwise, when everyone finished investigating their own routes but found that I knew nothing about what was inside the door, I would be holding everyone back.”

“Why are you so foolish!” Qiao Jiajin said. “Your understanding is different from everyone else’s. None of us investigated what was inside the doors—we just took a look at the layout first!”

“My… understanding is different from everyone else’s?” Zhang Chenze was stunned. “You mean… everyone already reached ‘Chu River Han Border’ just now? Only I didn’t go…?”

“Uh…”

Qiao Jiajin fell silent for a long time before realizing that perhaps it was his understanding that was different from the others’.

No wonder he had been the first to rush to “Chu River Han Border” and encountered Zhang Shan, who was equally single-minded from the opposite side. No wonder he had waited so long without seeing anyone else come out.

It turned out everyone else was investigating the “doors.”

“Ah, never mind all that…” Qiao Jiajin said. “What was it like inside the ‘door’? Did you investigate it clearly?”

“More or less…” Zhang Chenze nodded. “But there’s still another room.”

“Huh, you’re still going?”

“I don’t have to now.” Zhang Chenze thought for a moment and said, “Is the next room still just a ‘door’?”

“Right.” Qiao Jiajin answered. “I’ve looked at both my side and the one ahead of yours—they’re all ‘doors,’ nothing else.”

“Then I understand…” Zhang Chenze nodded. “What character was written on the door ahead of me?”

“I think it was ‘Chou.'”

“Good.” Zhang Chenze seemed to have thought of something and said to Qiao Jiajin, “Let’s go back and find Qi Xia first, tell him what we’ve seen.”

“Huh?” Qiao Jiajin was taken aback. “I didn’t see anything though.”

“That’s fine, I did.”

She led Qiao Jiajin back to the “preparation area.” As expected, the two of them were the first batch to return.

At that moment, Qi Xia was facing the wall, touching his chin as he pondered something. His brow was tightly furrowed, as if there was something he couldn’t figure out.

“Liar!” Qiao Jiajin said. “We’re back!”

“Oh?” Qi Xia came back to his senses and turned to look at Qiao Jiajin. “What’s in the venue?”

“There are ‘doors’!” Qiao Jiajin said. “There are lots of ‘doors,’ Liar.”

Qi Xia nodded after hearing this, then looked at Zhang Chenze. “What’s inside the ‘doors’?”

“They’re game venues for the ‘Zodiacs.'” Zhang Chenze said calmly. “These ‘doors’ lead directly to ‘Human-level games.'”

“Leading to game venues…” Qi Xia frowned. “Even crazier than I imagined…”

Qi Xia had thought Qinglong might be insane enough to have those “Zodiacs” bring their game props here to assist, but he never imagined he would directly open doors within “Cangjie Chess” to let everyone teleport out.

“But wouldn’t this count as ‘leaving the venue’?” Zhang Chenze asked.

“Probably not…” Qi Xia answered. “Since Qinglong opened doors in the ‘Human-level game’ venues, it means he definitely made arrangements with them beforehand. In their games, the ‘chips’ have become ‘characters.’ Moreover, after the games end, we still need to return through the ‘doors.’ Only leaving their venues would count as ‘escaping.'”

“Then wouldn’t the map for this game be far too large…?” Zhang Chenze said. “And we still have so many ‘Human-level’ games to deal with…”

“You’re overthinking it.” Qi Xia said. “The ‘Human-level games’ are just auxiliary to the ‘wagers.’ We don’t need to enter all of them. As long as our methods are appropriate, we can completely obtain the opponent’s ‘characters’ right here.”

“Speaking of which… there’s something strange.” Zhang Chenze said quietly.

“What?”

She stepped forward and said to Qi Xia in a very low voice, “I just entered a room with the character ‘Shen’ written on it. The ‘Zodiac’ inside looked very nervous… their mental state was even more strained than ours.”

“There’s nothing strange about that…” Qi Xia sighed after hearing this. “As long as you understand ‘Qinglong,’ you’ll know that when he communicates with those ‘Human-level Zodiacs,’ he’ll definitely scare them out of their wits. Perhaps in this game, those ‘Human-level Zodiacs’ have tasks even more arduous than ours, because the task they received might be to find a way to kill us.”

“That seems too strange…” Zhang Chenze said. “Qinglong and they are superior and subordinate—how could they be so afraid of him?”